I am going to leave my refund explanation right here because I think it describes best what this game is and why it's probably one of the worst products available on Steam:

The game was advertised as extremely difficult. Hence I bought it to challange my mind. However, the difficulty presented does not lie in the puzzles which are laughably easy but rather in the one hour time limit to navigate a fifty-by-fifty-miles maze that sports repeating features ad nauseam. Even at top speed one cannot hope to acomplish to scour even the tiniest part of it. The map feature resets after every hour and the maze doesn't even fit the map in the slightest. The "enigmas" are wishy-washy blabbering with more interpretations than people wander the Earth. Actual puzzles are absent. The maze has a few doors which ask trivial questions and the enigma rooms just have a panel of unindicative scrolling text which disguises itself as clever prose but in reality is blabbering about nothing. It speaks volumes when the height of entertainment in a game is a screen glitching effect after picking up a pocket watch.

The images on the Steam sale page seem to display a rich and diverse environment. The game's actuality is different. These images were taken from a few key locations while the bulk of the product consists of the most boring set of corridors in the history of professional design. This is highly misleading.

This game tries to cash in on the Bitcoin trend by promising a Bitcoin for the first person to complete it. This, however, is nothing but a carrot-on-a-stick made to lead people into buying this atrocious nothingness of a game. It's reflecting badly upon Valve to support such a shady business and I highly recommend to cease supporting and selling it. This product isn't downright illegal but it's ethically questionable. "It's just a social experiment" isn't an excuse for baiting people into paying for this garbage. "But you get a Bitcoin if you finish first" isn't an excuse for it either.

In conclusion, I refund this game because of the following:
~ Boring and bad design makes this game a bore to play (It's not fun)
~ The screenshots and video provided do not reflect the actual product (The game didn't match the videos and screenshots)

This is less about puzzling and more about a big terrible maze. I got to this one part where the puzzle was just an invisible platforming challenge, and it was then that I noticed the game had a timer.. I spent a half hour in there and the timer ran out and sent me back to the beginning.

You get a map that draws itself out when you go through the maze but it has no pointer to tell you where on it that you are.

It's no fun,, I would compete for the prize if it was at least a little enjoyable but it just isn't.

So no, you can't pay me 11,849 dollars and 80 cents to play this.

First things first, if you expect MonteCrypto to be a normal game, leave it be, it probably won't be for you. MonteCrypto is best to be considered a bit of a meta game. Something that is meant to be played outside of the usual constraints of a game.
Clues can be found on Github, parts on Twitter. Clues and solutions are in the game files which you have to extract or take apart by other means. Sometimes you literally have to break the game and it is meant to be played that way.

If you look for something with a guided story, something that is focused on logic puzzles, something you can play alone on an otherwise boring evening and also looks visually appealing: THIS is not what you want to play. Try the Witness maybe, a great game I'd totally recommend.

MonteCrypto is more of a purpose bound experiment with a 10k bounty on a first come first serve basis. It's best played in a group of like-minded people (check Game Detectives if you look for one). There is some kind of story frame around the whole experience but you have to explore to find all the little bits and pieces. In the end it will come down to one person getting the bitcoin. Most people will leave at that point, some will stay and try to figure out the story. Others will try on their own for the challenge.

Is it worth the ~1-2 USD? Idk. If some of the above sounded appealing, then it will very likely be. Otherwise, there are plenty of good puzzlers out there.

Regarding the people calling it a scam, I doubt it. It's certainly not mining bitcoin in the background as many of the scam shoutouts suggest. There is no network traffic that would match a mining client and without constant network communication, you can't be mining.

One tip to those of you still trying to run the maze legitimately... The game expects you to cheat, so don't feel bad for it.

Isn't it weird that a game related to bitcoins keeps your GPU at 90% even when (minimized) and is so cheap? Basically, it is a really bad game created only to scam you into using your GPU to mine bitcoins.

People Aren't fairly reviewing this game. This game is not for the faint of mind. You ned to be VERY intellegent to complete and understand the majority of the enigmas. While some puzzles are easily defeated, they are not to be brute forced. You WILL require a vast understanding of how a game's PAK files, binaries, and coding work. You will NOT solve this game just by walking through the maze and guessing what it could be. After you receive all words, you must find a way to put them in PERFECT order. Again, you will not do this by yourself. You will need much assistance. I recommend this game for anyone who wants a REAL challenge. Good hunting.

If I hadn't experienced MonteCrypto: The Bitcoin Enigma at its launch I would absolutely recommend against purchasing and playing this "Alternate Reality Game" as it is very timely and topical. MonteCrypto's McGuffin gimmick is about being the first to unlock an entire bitcoin, the other gimmick is the user-generated messages left around the maze - reminiscent of Dark Souls' message system but here they are far more unhelpful, offensive, and should be ignored.

There are several communities assisting in solving the puzzles either through reverse engineering or by hacking the game. I'm unsure if the developer endorses these methods and if they're absolutely necessary as some of the solutions to the puzzles in MonteCrypto are incredibly obtuse yet extremely satisfying to solve without help. Many require outside sources to solve, such as a QR reader and binary converter which I would generally detest if this were an actual game and not a social experience.

I enjoyed my playthrough a lot, right now, but I do not plan on spending more time trying to figure out the puzzles when I lack the expertise and don't have much interest in contributing to the community trying to solve MonteCrypto: The Bitcoin Enigma.

***PSA

The guys who have said this is nothing but a maze simulator are wrong. The game's maze is static and has been COMPLETELY fleshed out by multiple people. Step-by-step guides and also top down mapping are complete, so traversing the maze is now a part, but not as substantial as before.

A couple of the puzzles are disgustingly easy but the vast majority are insanely hard. I believe this is probably the hardest puzzle game to date. If you want a mind bending challenge that you will fail miserably at.... give this game a shot.

You could also join in the discords and become a part of the community that's really trying to tear this game apart. Look at my hours, its not a bitcoin miner, and its not just a maze game. There are 24 puzzles that are clear as night and day. The people who complained about the maze are people who played for 10 minutes.

Easy questions, impossible mazes
Zero "Not that way" out of ten
0/10

i5-7300HQ with GTX 1050

100% CPU usage + 100% GPU usage on background running

100% scamming for bitcoin mining.

Don't buy the game. It's awesome :)

What to say, i was randomly looking at some old videos and all of a sudden i remembered the soundtrack of this game and i started thinking about the insane 4/5 days spent trying to solve it. Me and 2 friends tryed so hard while i was streaming the process and i have some really good memories of that, from cheat engine to using an arduino to recreate some key sequences, trying outside for 5 hours straight and having 100 viewers on twitch (when i stream i normally get 2 Kappa). Everyone in chat trying to suggest or find solutions to strange enigmas, even on some discord servers created just to have people to think together. It's been short but an amazing community experience and that's it, i just wanted to share this.